FROM GOOGLE TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP: SANTHOSH KARNANANDA BELIEVES IN TAKING RISKS

“I was an Account Associate in Google; but I felt that I didn’t use all the skills I had. There was a pressing sense to do more and express myself comprehensively. So, I decided to explore entrepreneurship”,

Quotes Santhosh Karnananda, the founder of MeraEnglish.com, MyGmat and MyGre.

Hailing from a small town- Dindigul in South Tamil Nadu, Santhosh relocated to Chennai after completing school. He graduated from Loyola College, Chennai and then from Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad where he spent a lot of time to hone skills like networking, public speaking, marketing, presentation etc.
Both the colleges, he says, gave him the freedom to be what he wanted to be.

After working at Google for 3 years, he felt that he didn’t explore his potential completely and hence, he quit Google to explore the other sides of his personality.
He re-invented himself as a trainer and started training students for competitive exams like GRE, GMAT and CAT and also for the different stages of campus recruitment.

Later, he took the risk and invested all the savings he had in his venture and founded MeraEnglish.com in 2012 and MyGre and MyGmat in 2013.

MeraEnglish.com is a ‘free to read’ website that aims at improving English skills while MyGmat and MyGre are training academies to train students preparing for GMAT and GRE respectively in Chennai.

He admitted that Entrepreneurship is unlike a 9-5 job where you need to think about work only during work hours. As an Entrepreneur, your brain keeps thinking continuously about various edges like business development, process improvements etc., and it took him months to balance his mind.

He trains students to get their dream score on the GMAT and the GRE through his training academies MyGmat and MyGre respectively. In addition to this, through his guest lectures in colleges across South India, he also inspires bright minds to embark on their entrepreneurial journey as early as possible. He believes that the toughest part in entrepreneurship is to get started. In his words “Don’t wait for everything to fall in place. Just start. Nothing is lost if you fail; Failure teaches wonderful lessons.”

He is driven more by curiosity than by financial returns. He points out that, “if you are curious enough and work smartly, money will follow you.”

Deepanker Saxena
Deepanker Saxena is a Third year undergraduate at VIT University (Vellore) pursuing B.Tech in Information Technology. He likes interacting with different people and experiencing new things in life which he says inspires him to write. A blogger, researcher, gamer, Tech freak, web developer and a poet. Being the president of Entrepreneurship Cell – VIT, he has a keen interest in fostering Entrepreneurship across India.